Many different types of industrial processes and machines handle heterogeneous materials. A heterogeneous material can be a mixed phased material. A mixed phase material includes two or more states of matter, e.g., two or more of liquid, gas, and solid materials. In some cases all three states of matter may be present. A heterogeneous material can also include two immiscible materials of the same phase, for example, oil and water. Examples of processing involving heterogeneous materials include coal gasifiers, carbon capture processes, combustion chambers, and Fischer-Tropsch synthesis, wet gas separators, pneumatic conveyors, cyclone separators, fluidised beds and fluidised bed dryers, batch mixing, slurry (or hydraulic) conveying, oil refining, oil drilling, pipe line transport. It would be desirable for many purposes such as process control and process optimization to be able to obtain a 3-D image as well as 2-D cross sectional images of heterogeneous materials in such industrial processes. X-ray computed tomography would generally be too slow and prohibitively expensive for most industrial processes.
Electrical Capacitive Tomography (ECT) scanning has been used to obtain 2-D cross sectional images. However for the most part, ECT systems rely on time consuming and computationally intensive algorithms that involve iteratively recomputing electrostatic field solutions. Such iterative solutions are too slow for real time imaging of rapidly changing multi-phase flows and processing unless computer hardware that is cost prohibitive were to be used.
In many industrial settings such as in oil refineries or oil pipelines, it would be desirable to have multiple ECT sensors installed. For example ECT sensors can be installed on different equipment in an oil refinery to monitor different stages of an oil refining process. In the case of an oil pipline, it would be desirable to have ECT sensors installed at multiple locations on the pipeline feeding into within pumping stations, so as to obtain advance warning of any undesirable flow attributes such as for example a slug of gas or oil approaching the pumping station.
Due to the design of any given industrial plant at which it is desirable to install one or more ECT sensors, the location of the pipe section or processing chamber on which it is desired to place a monitoring ECT sensor may be inaccessible on a day-to-day basis due to safety considerations or due to the physical location. Furthermore, due to hazardous environmental conditions in certain types of facilities, that include heat and hot vapors, certain sensitive electronics used in an ECT imaging device will have an unacceptably short lifetime.
The “background” description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent it is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description which may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly or impliedly admitted as prior art against the present invention.